“... the dying on the road to Magadan. The death certificate mentioned enterocolitis; other prisoners said many years later that he died in violent dementia brought on by starvation and disease. For a very long time, there were legends about him circulating in the Gulag, some of which reached those who had known him. Mirsky was supposed to have given 45 lectures ...”

“... Twin Towers and a metaphor for American victimisation is strange, even bizarre. The same could be said about ‘terror bombing’, a military term used in World War Two to characterise, for example, the US firebombing of 64 Japanese cities before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to speak of Hamburg, Dresden etc. All this was forgotten as ‘terror’ took on new ...”

“... in the path of all ‘life-writers’. In the introduction to his life of George Orwell, Crick said that most biographies were just dressed-up historical novels. They drafted a nicely shaped psychological plot for their subjects, and then – whenever the subject failed to follow that plot – twisted or invented the evidence with ‘she must have felt ...”

“... to the authorities. Whatever, was Eisenstein’s feeling about that ignominious endgame. He said he had lost all interest in the ‘wandering ship’ the minute it ceased to be a revolutionary ‘asset’. Battleship Potemkin does not play by the narrative rules. Born in 1898 in Riga, then an outpost of the Russian Empire, Eisenstein enjoyed a ...”

“... a movement so variegated and fissiparous it might be better described as a tendency. It used to be said that puritanism fragmented over time: first the mid-17th-century schism between Presbyterians and Independents, the former desiring a national church and the latter self-governing congregations; then an explosion of exotically named sects ...”

“... Jest, my friend Francis got in touch to say a) he found the book astonishing, everything I’d said it was, one of the greatest literary works of all time; b) but when he got to the ending – 981 pp. body copy, another 96 of small-print endnotes – did I think he was going to think it was worth it? No, I said, the ...”

“... and Egyptian hieroglyphs, Magnus Celsius and Staveless Runes, Michael Ventris and Linear B, Edward Hincks and Akkadian cuneiform, Yuri Knorozov and Maya glyphs. These were undeniable intellectual achievements. They were also endeavours tinged with madness. How else could anyone persist with such fiendishly difficult work? The 11th-century Arabic text on ...”

“... communication tunnels) as the tunnel which was promoted in the late 19th century by Edward Watkin of the Southeastern Railway Company and his partner and engineer, William Low. Despite the success of the great Alpine tunnels – Saint-Gotthard, Simplon, Mont Cenis – it is doubtful that Watkin and Low could have succeeded with their project of ...”

“... deferential tone and what she was writing elsewhere makes uncomfortable reading. She joked with Edward Clodd: Mrs Hardy seems to be queerer than ever. She has just asked me whether I have noticed how extremely like Crippen Mr T.H. is, in personal appearance. She added darkly that she would not be surprised to find herself in the cellar one morning. All ...”

“... he becomes engrossed in electrical experiments and succeeds in turning his brother (‘Uncle Edward’) into the chime of the front-door bell. Other characters constantly appear and disappear, though in less radical fashion, throughout both books. They include the narrator’s ineffectual and inconsequential mother, the assistants in the store who are ...”

“... somehow he never got much of it onto paper. When he finished composing his first poem at 20, he said: ‘Well, if this is poetry, it is very easy to write.’ It cost him little in effort or emotion; when he read aloud from his Earthly Paradise, Georgie Burne-Jones, who listened to him out of love, had to bite her fingers or stick herself with pins to stay ...”

“... about Hugh Kenner and commented: ‘This precipitates not Ooh but Ah.’ Let us indulge the King Edward Professor for a moment. Supposing critical judgments – and judgments about judgments – may be reduced to a series of sounds like ‘ooh’ and ‘ah’, what ‘direct’ and ‘personal’ vocal reaction is precipitated by Geoffrey Hill: Essays on his ...”

“... any luxuriance à la Mary Renault. Instead we have a flatness redolent of the travel writings of Edward Heath. A busy market scene: ‘Traders from every corner of the world offered their wares.’ An expedition through a jungle: ‘The journey through the forest was pleasant. Birds of every sort were on the wing ...’ The dialogue, which acceptably wants ...”

“... refugee; Stravinsky debonair in double-breasted suit photographed in Los Angeles by his friend Edward G. Robinson; a merry Stravinsky at a recording session (of The Rake’s Progress), one hand holding a cigarette, the other in conjunction with a whisky bottle. The implacability of the man stays stamped on his photographed features till the end ...”